Our goal at Lombardi is to create the safest and most comfortable learning environment as possible for all learners. As physical education teachers we have done this by creating two separate groups each class period, we have a recreational group and a competitive group. Students are given the freedom to make this selection, a selection in which they feel they will be the most comfortable and successful in their own learning. No matter what group is selected, both accomplish many of the same tasks. As an entire department, we all take great pride in this split and feel we have done a great job explaining to students its importance during the selection process. Students are able to choose the group that best suits them, for example, we encourage them to choose a group based on their needs versus choosing a group because their friends chose it.

The difference between the classes:

Competitive students are typically students that understand most sports/games or can quickly learn how to play them. These students enjoy competition and like playing team sports for example, these students would enjoy playing games such as football, basketball and softball.

Recreation students are typically students who do not play competitive sports and do not enjoy them. Rather the recreational students play games like HORSE, Lightening, Ultimate football, more lead up style games.

Each time we switch units we allow students to switch from competitive and recreational. We typically do not see much cross over but in some cases there are a few students who are competitive but absolutely cannot stand a certain sport or activity, so they will choose recreational for that unit’s entirety.